The concept of targeted drug delivery is based on cell receptors which are overexpressed in the target cell in contrast to the not-to-be-targeted cells. If a drug has a binding site to those overexpressed cell receptors it allows the delivery of the drug after its systemic administration in high concentration to those target cells while leaving other cells, which are not of interested, unaffected. For example, if tumor cells are characterized by an overexpression of a specific cell receptor, a drug with binding affinity to said receptor will after intravenous infusion accumulate in high concentration in the tumor tissue while leaving the normal tissue unaffected.
This targeted drug delivery concept has also been used in radiomedicine to deliver radionuclides selectively to the target cells for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes.
For this radiomedicinal application the target cell receptor binding moiety is typically linked to a chelating agent which is able to form a strong complex with the metal ions of a radionuclide. This radiopharmaceutical drug is then delivered to the target cell and the decay of the radionuclide is then releasing high energy electrons, positrons or alpha particles as well as gamma rays at the target site.
One technical problem with those radiopharmaceutical drug products is that the decay of the radionuclide occurs constantly, e.g. also during the manufacturing and during storage of the drug product, and the released high energy emissions induce the cleavage of the chemical bonds of the molecules which form part of the drug product. This is often referred to as radiolysis or radiolytic degradation. The radiolytic degradation of the receptor binding moiety of the drug may lead to a decrease in its efficacy to act as a diagnostic and/or therapeutic.
The poor stability of those radiopharmaceutical drug products and their lack of any significant shelf-life required that those drugs have so far to be manufactured as an individual patient's dose unit in the laboratories at the hospital and administered immediately to the patient who had to be present at that hospital already awaiting the radiological treatment. To facilitate such drug preparation in the hospital laboratories, “cold” (i.e. non-radioactive) freeze-dried kits have been developed which comprise the cell receptor binding moiety linked to a chelating agent without the radionuclide. The freeze-dried content of those kit vials is then to be reconstituted with an solution of the radionuclide short before administration (Das et al. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 2014, 299, 1389-1398; Das et al. Current Radiopharmaceuticals 2014, 7, 12-19; Luna-Gutierrez et al. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 2017, 314, 2181-2188). However, those kits are not “ready-to-use” as they require the reconstitution step and in addition further processing steps (e.g. applying heat for the complexation reaction) as well as purification and sterilization steps before the drug can be finally administered.
To reduce radiolysis of radiopharmaceutical drug products and thus improve stability, various strategies have been explored with more or less success: The drug product may be stored at low temperatures, or produced in high dilution, or stabilizers may be added.
Adding stabilizers however may be problematic as those chemicals may have a negative impact on the complexation of the radionuclide into the chelating agent or may have a limited solubility and precipitate from the solution. Ethanol has been reported as stabilizer against radiolysis (WO 2008/009444). While ethanol might not have a negative impact on the complexation or a solubility issue, higher amounts of ethanol in an infusion solution may be physiologically problematic and may have a negative impact on the tolerability of the drug product.
Producing the drug product in high dilution has the disadvantage that large volumes of infusion solutions need to be administered to patients. For the convenience of patients and for drug tolerability reasons it would be highly desirable to provide the radiopharmaceutical drug product in a high concentration. Those highly concentrated solutions however are in particular prone to radiolysis. Therefore, there are contradictory positions between, on the one hand, avoiding radiolysis by dilution of the drug product but, on the other hand, avoiding patient discomfort during treatment by providing a concentrated drug solution. In Mathur et al. Cancer Biotherapy and Radiopharmaceuticals, 2017, 32(7), 266-273 a product of high concentration has be reported and claimed being ready-to-use. However, that composition may be problematic with respect to tolerability as it contains high amounts of ethanol.
It remains therefore a challenge to design a ready-to-use radiopharmaceutical drug product which can be produced at commercial scale and delivered as a sufficiently stable and sterile solution in a high concentration which leads to a for patient convenient small infusion volume and which has a composition of high physiological tolerability (e.g. a composition which does not contain ethanol).